


I Can Finally Say I Am Happy.

by ThePoetess



Series: The Life and Times of Charles Dickens [2]
Category: Nicholas Nickleby - Fandom
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-30
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-07-28 07:44:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7631209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThePoetess/pseuds/ThePoetess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A story about Smike.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Now. Now I can say it. I am happy.

**Author's Note:**

> Smike is my favourite character in Nicholas Nickleby.

"Smike, the wall that separates us shall never be set by me. And I promise you, from this night forward, the world shall deal by you as it does by me." And from that day on, Smike had found his home. He had found a family.

He had never known kindness until that day, that day had been one of the best days in his young life.

"Oh, Nicholas, I never knew a kinder person in this world, who suffered more than he at the hands of people so cruel, so very vile, so despicable, oh! And he was good, so very good! He is gone so soon, too soon, before his time! Nicholas what are we to do without our poor dear Smike!? Oh Nicholas, I do feel so for you, you who knew him more than I and for longer... Oh and he was too good and too kind to be taken so to an early and cold grave, and in my way, in my way I had started to love him, for his kindness, for his pleasant smile, his want of everything good in this world."  
Nicholas Nickleby looked down at his boots with a grief stricken face, which he turned to his weeping sister Kate, he gave a small smile through the tears "Now he too is gone, oh Kate, my dear Kate, when I think of him, poor fellow, and I do often, I think of how little a life he lived, but how he lived it without complaint, oh Kate! How are we to live without him!?" The tears set in and the two siblings embraced as shoulders shaking Nicholas went on "oh Kate, when I picture a life without him, it seems very impossible that I should ever know happiness again, but I know that is not what he would want for me or you, he would want us to be happy in everything we do, every adventure he will be beside us. At the last, dear Kate, at the last he was happy." At that Kate had started to weep with shaking shoulders and uncontrollable tears, Nicholas held her once more, he gave her a slight smile "Do not be sad Kate," he shook his head making his hair flap about "I know he is beyond all pain, all suffering, and that he would not see you weep for him, but see you laugh. He would see both of us happy."

"What happens when the light first pierces the dark dampness in which we have waited? We are slapped and cut loose. If we are lucky, someone is there to catch us and persuade us that we are safe. But are we safe? What happens if, too early, we lose a parent? That party on whom we rely for only everything? Why, we are cut loose again and we wonder, even dread whose hands will catch us now? There once lived a man named Nicholas Nickleby..."

And so they had married and started a new chapter in their lives. Some chapters were better than others. All was not happy, nor all sad.


	2. Weakness is tiring, but strength is exhausting.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Join us if you will for a brief glance into the lives of our young friends.

Nicholas Nickleby sat by the fireside in his little cottage, the cottage where he had grown into manhood, the cottage in Devonshire. Eyes fixated out the window pane, with the fire lighting his studious face, he watched his wife and children before him. Madeleine looked up at him from the hearth rug where she sat, with a boy on both sides of her and a small girl with curly dark hair laying on her skirt. "Nicholas, what are you thinking about so studiously?" Nicholas smiled quickly "only that I would wish Kate, Frank, mother, and Smike to be here, if they only were here, but think my dear, that if my dear father had not died, I would never have met you, Kate would never have met Frank, Smike would still be at Dotheby's or -" he could not bring himself to say the word dead. "Tomorrow where will you go?" "Perhaps to Liverpool. I could find work on a ship. Do not be anxious. Before I do anything I will get you to your home. Where is it?" Smike had turned to Nicholas with the most pitiable look in his anxious blue brown eyes "You are my home"


End file.
